[Saturday evening (beginning of Sunday in the Islamic calendar) was the gala dinner and performance. It was a ticketed event with numbered tables, which potentially eliminated the awkwardness of looking for a place to sit a table of strangers, but also potentially introduced the awkwardness of feeling one had to engage in conversation. As it turned out, I was seated with a family from Seattle and a single man from Chicago. The husband of the family is Indian-American and his wife is Bosnian. They both work for Microsoft and are involved in the Voices of the Bosnian Genocide project. He is an amateur historian who is writing a book on the history of Bosnia. His involvement there goes back to 1992. During the war, he spent some time working with the then President of Bosnia.

There were more musical performances. Our table was off in a corner. Once people began to move around and sit where they wanted to, the wife invited me to come sit with her closer to where the musicians were performing. My (unfortunately somewhat blurry) photo from that perspective is below.

At the end of the evening, the wife introduced me to Hafiz Aziz Alili, who attended school with one of her relatives. He is the most celebrated hafiz in the Balkans, and one of the most celebrated in the world. Aziz Alili is the second from the left in the photo. His son is at the far left. The one who has his microphone down is pop & traditional singer Armin Muzaferjia, and on the right is Tarik Omerhodžić, who leads a well-known chorus in Bosnia.]